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The Apollo 14 astronauts, who have explored the moon for 47 years, may have found the oldest stone on Earth, according to a
In 1971, when they explored the Cone Crater on the Moon, Apollo 14 astronauts brought to Earth a rocky fragment. At the time, this trace of lunar matter was poorly known. A team of scientists concluded that this fragment contained a small piece of primitive soil .
These data are underlined in a study published in the scientific journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters, where it is noted that the small fragment of the Earth will have reached the Moon following an explosion on our planet caused by a significant impact about 4 billion years ago.
NASA / LPI / USRA / Bellucci et al. 19659007] This is an extraordinary discovery that helps to give a better picture of the primitive Earth and the bombardment that has changed our planet.
The oldest fragment of Earth found on a lunar rock is marked by the arrow. during the awakening of life, "notes the study's co-author, David Kring, a scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute's University Space Research Association in Houston, United States, in a statement on the subject. The researchers involved badyzed lunar surface samples collected by members of the Apollo 14 mission. They found a two-gram fragment made of quartz, feldspar and zircon . rare elements on the Moon and of use on Earth.
"Chemical badyzes showed that the fragment crystallized in an oxidized environment, at temperatures compatible with those found in the subsoil located near from the beginning of the Earth ", according to researchers cited by Livescience.com
will have crystallized about 4 billion years ago, 20 kilometers below the surface of the Earth, before 39, be launched into space by a "powerful impact" . He ended up landing on the moon, "three times closer to Earth" than today, as noted by scientists.
Already on the surface of the Moon, the fragment was "partially melted and probably buried" by a
It would have been discovered by another impact about 26 million years ago, when A collision at the origin of the cone crater, which has a width of 340 meters ]
This theory is far from proven, but that is l 'most plausible explanation of the conclusion, as admitted by the authors of the study. Even if admitting that the fragment came from the Moon itself would amount to changing everything we know about Earth's natural satellite, namely the conditions of its interior many, many years ago. "It would be necessary that the sample formed enormous depths in the lunar mantle, where very different rock compositions are anticipated," conclude the authors of the study.
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